Local elections 2025: Final polls show fractured public opinion
Thursday is the first major electoral test of a new political reality, with Reform UK looking to surge and the Conservatives facing crushing losses.
These councils, last contested at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-Covid vaccine powers in 2021, present Kemi Badenoch’s party with a staggering number of seats to defend.
Based on the current polling levels, she could be poised to lose as many as 450 councillors.
Reform is also closely challenging Labour at the Runcorn and Helsby by-election – also held on Thursday – though Farage’s party would have to overcome a 14,700 majority.
Speculation has mounted that the Conservatives will ultimately have to make an electoral pact with Reform – though Badenoch has so far ruled the arrangement out.
In a major temperature test ahead of the vote, a joint poll between YouGov, Sky News and The Times found that Reform UK leads, at 26 per cent, trailed by Labour at 23 per cent and the Conservatives.
Meanwhile, More in Common’s April seat-by-seat multi-level regression (MRP) survey for April found that if the current polling was replicated at a general election, no party would break the 200 seat barrier – with Reform in the lead with 180.
The think tank polling had Labour and the Conservatives both at 165 seats – which would be Labour’s worst result in a century, but still better than the Tory showing at the last election.
The end of two-party Britain?
The Lib Dems scored 15 per cent in that same poll, and they remain a powerful insurgent force in local politics, announcing on Wednesday that seven independent councillors in Slough – who quit Labour in June 2024 over the party’s policy on Gaza – have joined Sir Ed Davey’s party.
Sabia Akram, one of the new Lib Dems, said: “I have worked with them and know that they believe in our town, its residents and the importance of accountable local government. They are true community champions”.
This movement is a hint that Lib Dems are siphoning away political oxygen from the Greens – down at nine per cent – who in 2024 appeared to be the more natural home for disaffected voters to the left of Starmer’s Labour.
Though this moment is striking for a party which once faced electoral oblivion for its coalition with the Conservatives, the development jars with the image of the Lib Dems as a safe haven for suburban ex-Tories who felt marginalised by the era of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.
The rise of parties both to the right of the Conservatives and to the left of Labour is unprecedented and, with an electoral system designed for two-party rule, can produce bizarre and uncertain outcomes.